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拍品专文
This arresting and remarkably well-preserved picture showing a group of Indian musicians was painted by William Hodges, the first professional landscape painter from Britain to work in India. This and the following two lots were commissioned by Augustus Cleveland (1754-1784), Collector of Bhagalpur, Bihar, who, along with Warren Hastings (1732-1818), was Hodges's most important patron in India. Unlike the majority of Hodges's oil paintings of India, many of which were based on drawings and executed after his return to England, the fluent handling and strikingly direct portraits suggest this canvas was almost certainly painted during Hodges’s stay with Cleveland from January to May of 1782. The posthumous sale of Cleveland's effects, which took place in Calcutta in 1794, included no fewer than twenty-one oil paintings by the artist. It remains unclear as to whether the Tapeley (fig. 1) pictures were acquired at the Calcutta sale, or if they were sent directly to Cleveland's family in England soon after his untimely death in 1784, aged twenty-nine.
For Hodges, the present picture constituted a rare departure from landscape painting. It was in that field and, particularly, through the aquatints he made following his travels through the country, that the eyes of his contemporaries were opened to India’s scenery and architecture. Between 1789 and 1794, Hodges exhibited twenty-five oils of India at the Royal Academy, while the forty-eight aquatints based on his drawings were published in two volumes entitled Select Views in India between 1785 and 1788. Together with his writings, published in 1793 (Travels in India During the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783), Hodges made a vital contribution to the British perception of India's past while also paving the way for fellow artists such as Thomas and William Daniell, whose extensive travels through India between 1785 and 1794 culminated in the publication of their Oriental Scenery.
While it remains uncertain as to whether this and the following two lots were included in the 1794 sale, a number of other works have been tentatively identified with pictures offered from Cleveland’s collection, including Tomb and distant View of the Rajmahal Hills (1781; London, Tate Britain) and Rocks near Sakrigali (1781-82; Private collection), the latter sharing the same freedom of handling evident in the present three canvases (see William Hodges 1744-1797: the Art of Exploration, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 147-149, nos. 46 and 47).
From 1772 to 1775, Hodges had accompanied Captain James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific as the expedition’s artist. As with the artist’s works produced during his three years with Cook on board Resolution, Hodges’s representations of India’s landscapes and people are shaped by the aesthetics then looming large over contemporary European art, most notably those of exoticism and the sublime. Furthermore, as Geoff Quilley has observed, Hodges was ‘the first professional landscape artist (British or otherwise) to represent such global territories so profusely and on such a scale,’ and that this body of work emerged from ‘a complex symbiosis between the development of British art and the rise of British global dominion’ (G. Quilley, ‘William Hodges, artist of empire’, William Hodges, 177-1797: the Art of Exploration, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 1).
Augustus Cleveland was the son of John Cleveland (1706-1763), Secretary to the Admiralty, of Tapeley, Devon, and his third wife, Sarah. Augustus secured a writership in the East India Company's Bengal establishment in 1770 and, on arrival in India the following year, was appointed assistant collector of Bhagalpur. He quickly became a favourite of Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, and his wife, Marian. By 1779, he had risen to the position of Collector and Magistrate. Cleveland was a brilliant administrator who combined ambition with considerable vision, allied with personal charm and generosity, characteristics that were central to his successful negotiations with the Paharias, who occupied the hilly landscape to the south and west of Bhagalpur (see following lot for further details on Cleveland’s relationship with the Paharias). It was through Hastings that Cleveland was introduced to Hodges in 1781. They became friends, and in early 1782, Hodges stayed for four months with Cleveland at his residence in Bhagalpur. From there, they embarked on several expeditions into the surrounding countryside, accounts of which are recorded in the artist’s Travels. Hodges subsequently visited other regions of the country before returning in late 1783, when, to his dismay, he found Cleveland dangerously ill. In a bid to restore his young friend's health, Hastings instructed Cleveland to board The Atlas, bound for the Cape of Good Hope. However, on 13 January 1784, before they had reached the mouth of the Ganges, Cleveland was dead. The cause of his sudden demise, aged only twenty-nine, has been the source of some debate. One legend claims that Cleveland was shot with a poisoned arrow by Tilka Manjhi (1750-1785), a tribal leader who led a rebellion against the administration of the East India Company. However, this unsubstantiated theory has been dismissed by recent historians, who have suggested he was likely suffering from fever or dysentery. On the instructions of Marian Hastings, who was also on board The Atlas, Cleveland's body was put into a barrel of spirits and sent back to Calcutta, where he was buried in the city’s South Park Street Cemetery.
Contemporary and later accounts suggest Cleveland’s death was met with widespread mourning. In a letter to his wife, dated 8 March 1784, Hastings wrote, ‘Poor Cleveland! Every tongue through Bengal and Behar is loud in his praises and in Expressions of deep regret for his loss’ (The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife, Transcribed in full from the Originals in the British Museum, Edinburgh and London, 1905, p. 276). Two monuments commemorating Cleveland were erected in Bhagalpur. The first, built in 1786 by the zamindars (landowners) and native government officials of the district, was later depicted by Charles D’Oyly in a watercolour now in the British Library (1820; fig. 2). The second was erected in 1788 in front of his residence, known as Tilha-Kothi, and is inscribed with an epitaph composed by Hastings himself. Many years later, Reginald Heber (1783-1826), when appointed Bishop of Calcutta, was astonished to find Cleveland's memory still greatly revered. As Geoff Quilley has observed, ‘Cleveland’s noted benevolence and success in dealing with the local Indian population rendered him something of a paradigm for the image of paternalistic colonialism in India that the British were actively cultivating during the 1780s and 1790s’ (op. cit., p. 139).
For Hodges, the present picture constituted a rare departure from landscape painting. It was in that field and, particularly, through the aquatints he made following his travels through the country, that the eyes of his contemporaries were opened to India’s scenery and architecture. Between 1789 and 1794, Hodges exhibited twenty-five oils of India at the Royal Academy, while the forty-eight aquatints based on his drawings were published in two volumes entitled Select Views in India between 1785 and 1788. Together with his writings, published in 1793 (Travels in India During the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783), Hodges made a vital contribution to the British perception of India's past while also paving the way for fellow artists such as Thomas and William Daniell, whose extensive travels through India between 1785 and 1794 culminated in the publication of their Oriental Scenery.
While it remains uncertain as to whether this and the following two lots were included in the 1794 sale, a number of other works have been tentatively identified with pictures offered from Cleveland’s collection, including Tomb and distant View of the Rajmahal Hills (1781; London, Tate Britain) and Rocks near Sakrigali (1781-82; Private collection), the latter sharing the same freedom of handling evident in the present three canvases (see William Hodges 1744-1797: the Art of Exploration, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 147-149, nos. 46 and 47).
From 1772 to 1775, Hodges had accompanied Captain James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific as the expedition’s artist. As with the artist’s works produced during his three years with Cook on board Resolution, Hodges’s representations of India’s landscapes and people are shaped by the aesthetics then looming large over contemporary European art, most notably those of exoticism and the sublime. Furthermore, as Geoff Quilley has observed, Hodges was ‘the first professional landscape artist (British or otherwise) to represent such global territories so profusely and on such a scale,’ and that this body of work emerged from ‘a complex symbiosis between the development of British art and the rise of British global dominion’ (G. Quilley, ‘William Hodges, artist of empire’, William Hodges, 177-1797: the Art of Exploration, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2004, p. 1).
Augustus Cleveland was the son of John Cleveland (1706-1763), Secretary to the Admiralty, of Tapeley, Devon, and his third wife, Sarah. Augustus secured a writership in the East India Company's Bengal establishment in 1770 and, on arrival in India the following year, was appointed assistant collector of Bhagalpur. He quickly became a favourite of Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, and his wife, Marian. By 1779, he had risen to the position of Collector and Magistrate. Cleveland was a brilliant administrator who combined ambition with considerable vision, allied with personal charm and generosity, characteristics that were central to his successful negotiations with the Paharias, who occupied the hilly landscape to the south and west of Bhagalpur (see following lot for further details on Cleveland’s relationship with the Paharias). It was through Hastings that Cleveland was introduced to Hodges in 1781. They became friends, and in early 1782, Hodges stayed for four months with Cleveland at his residence in Bhagalpur. From there, they embarked on several expeditions into the surrounding countryside, accounts of which are recorded in the artist’s Travels. Hodges subsequently visited other regions of the country before returning in late 1783, when, to his dismay, he found Cleveland dangerously ill. In a bid to restore his young friend's health, Hastings instructed Cleveland to board The Atlas, bound for the Cape of Good Hope. However, on 13 January 1784, before they had reached the mouth of the Ganges, Cleveland was dead. The cause of his sudden demise, aged only twenty-nine, has been the source of some debate. One legend claims that Cleveland was shot with a poisoned arrow by Tilka Manjhi (1750-1785), a tribal leader who led a rebellion against the administration of the East India Company. However, this unsubstantiated theory has been dismissed by recent historians, who have suggested he was likely suffering from fever or dysentery. On the instructions of Marian Hastings, who was also on board The Atlas, Cleveland's body was put into a barrel of spirits and sent back to Calcutta, where he was buried in the city’s South Park Street Cemetery.
Contemporary and later accounts suggest Cleveland’s death was met with widespread mourning. In a letter to his wife, dated 8 March 1784, Hastings wrote, ‘Poor Cleveland! Every tongue through Bengal and Behar is loud in his praises and in Expressions of deep regret for his loss’ (The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife, Transcribed in full from the Originals in the British Museum, Edinburgh and London, 1905, p. 276). Two monuments commemorating Cleveland were erected in Bhagalpur. The first, built in 1786 by the zamindars (landowners) and native government officials of the district, was later depicted by Charles D’Oyly in a watercolour now in the British Library (1820; fig. 2). The second was erected in 1788 in front of his residence, known as Tilha-Kothi, and is inscribed with an epitaph composed by Hastings himself. Many years later, Reginald Heber (1783-1826), when appointed Bishop of Calcutta, was astonished to find Cleveland's memory still greatly revered. As Geoff Quilley has observed, ‘Cleveland’s noted benevolence and success in dealing with the local Indian population rendered him something of a paradigm for the image of paternalistic colonialism in India that the British were actively cultivating during the 1780s and 1790s’ (op. cit., p. 139).